Lea Michele

Lea Michele Sarfati was born in The Bronx, New York. She is the only child of Edith Thomasina (née Porcelli), a retired nurse, and Mark David Sarfati, a real estate agent and former delicatessen owner. Her mother is an Italian American with ancestors from Rome and Naples, while her father is a Sephardic Jew with Judaeo-Spanish-speaking ancestors from Thessaloniki, Greece. Most of the Jews in Thessaloniki were killed during The Holocaust, including Michele's great-great-grandmother. Michele was raised in her mother's Catholic faith, and has stated that her father "gladly" attended Mass with them. She spent the first four years of her life living in the Bronx, until she and her parents moved to the more suburban area of Tenafly, New Jersey. The family also rented an apartment in Manhattan, where they lived when Michele was performing on Broadway. Michele was educated at Rockland Country Day School for elementary school in Congers, New York.

Michele started using her middle name at an early age. When she went on her first audition, for the role of Young Cosette in Les Misérables, she gave her name as Lea Michele, and has used it professionally ever since. Michele stated that she intentionally left off her surname because she was teased about its pronunciation. During the audition, she sang "Angel of Music" from The Phantom of the Opera – the only musical she knew at the time. Michele went along to support a friend, but ended up landing the part herself. In 1997, Michele was homeschooled while living and working in Toronto, where she performed in a production of Ragtime. For her high school education, Michele attended Tenafly High School. During her time there, she was on the volleyball team, the debate team, and participated in choir. In her teens, when she was not working on the stage, Michele had a part-time job at a bat mitzvah dress shop. She also worked at her father's deli.

Michele refrained from auditioning for Broadway roles during her freshman, sophomore and junior years so she could focus on her education. In the summers of 2000, 2001, and 2002, Michele attended Stagedoor Manor, a performing arts training center in the Catskills. At Stagedoor she was part of the touring troupe Our Time Cabaret, and performed in productions of Side by Side by Sondheim and The Who's Tommy. In her final summer at the camp, Michele was to perform in a production of Sweet Charity, but instead booked the role of Wendla Bergmann in a workshop of Spring Awakening, forcing her to drop out. She was later accepted to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, but opted instead to continue working professionally on the stage. When Michele was 19 years old, her mother Edith was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Edith received treatment from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.